A Line in The Sand

by Rjalker

He lied to the others, when he told them that he hadn't had a choice. He knew what he was doing. (Set during Book 1, The Invasion)

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Water filled my mouth, and I choked. I fought and struggled and tried to scream. But they were too strong, and I was too weak.

Rough hands held me down, held me face down in the water, laughing as I suffocated, laughing as the water filled my mouth. Water rushed up my nose and down my throat, into my lungs. Water soaked my hair and burned at my eyes because I hadn't closed them fast enough useless flight or fight instinct screamed to keep them open.

Burning. My chest was burning, my eyes were burning. I was drowning, I was soaking, and I was burning.

And all the while, she shivered in my jacket, tiny, scared, and useless.

She could have become anything. She could have become a wolf, to snarl and snap and bite their sick and twisted daemons into submission. She could have become a lion, to roar and claw and threaten just by existing. She could have become a bear, so huge and hulking that nothing could take her down.

She could have protected me.

But she didn't.

She just sat in my pocket, shivering and scared and safe while I suffocated and drowned and burned. While darkness closed in on my world, she sat shivering and scared and safe.

My world started to go a deeper black than the darkness behind my closed eyes, dizziness crawling in from the sides, so that the only thing keeping me from falling over were the hands still holding me in place, still pinning my face into the flushing toilet bowl, still drowning me.

I think for a moment I lost consciousness. One moment I was still face down in the water, choking, burning, suffocating- and then I was being yanked backwards with so much force that I stumbled, my whole balance thrown off with weakness, sending me falling straight to the cold linoleum floor when the jerk who'd been holding me let go of my arms.

I didn't hear what was said. I was too busy doubling over and puking up my guts, choking and gagging and fighting to breathe past the water in my lungs.

Everything was on fire. My throat, my chest, my nose, my eyes. I couldn't hear or see what was going on around me, so I wasn't even aware when my torturers left the bathroom, left me behind, left me alive.

I just kept gagging and choking, slowly suffocating.

And then a heavy fist hit me square in the back, and some of the water in my lungs loosened, and I puked up some more disgusting toilet water. Blessed oxegyn flooded my chest, before it caught on another mouthful of water. The fist pounded my back a few more times, until I was finally able to breathe without feeling like I was going to pass out, and by the time my lungs were clear enough for me to look up at my savior, I was shivering as hard as she was, and so dizzy I almost passed out right then and there.

There was a kid standing over me, his daemon a bird of prey, perched on his shoulder. She wasn't hiding, she wasn't quaking in useless fear, she was sitting right there, for everyone to see. She didn't flinch away from my gaze. She had probably helped him rescue me.

The kid was familiar. I even knew his name-Jake. I'd seen him around school, and we shared a few classes together, but we'd never talked. Not because he wasn't friendly or anything, but because I just...didn't talk to anyone. There wasn't much point if I'd just have to switch schools again next year when it was my Aunt's turn to 'care' for me. I knew his name, but I wasn't sure of his daemon's name. But I was sure I'd recognize it if someone said it.

Jake examined me closely for a few seconds, looking concerned, before he held out a hand to help me to my feet. "Hey man, are you okay?"

Heh. I almost laughed.

I'd almost been drowned in a toilet, and he wanted to know if I was okay? Try so filled with adrenaline that even halfway to passing out, my heart was pounding. Try filled with so much rage that if my hands hadn't been shaking, they'd be clenched into fists. Try so embarrassed that the only reason my face wasn't fire-engine red was because I was pretty sure I was going into shock from the lack of oxygen.

My expression must have mimicked my thoughts, because he grimaced, and dropped the proffered hand. His daemon, a peregrine falcon, I recognized, seemed to wilt a little bit.

Suddenly I felt guilty. This guy had just rescued me, and he didn't even know me, and now I was just brushing him off.

I got to my feet with slow, shaky movements, trying to brush my soaking hair out of my face. "I'm okay." I said, trying not to show how much the words made me want to bust out laughing and never stop, "Sorry, I just…" I shook my head when an explanation refused to come. "Thanks for um. You know. Helping me." I added lamely, staring down at my shoes.

It was at that moment that she decided to make her presence known. She crawled out of the collar of my shirt, still in her damn mouse form, her fur soaked straight through because of all the splashing I'd done when they first dunked my head in the water.

I would have said she looked like a drowned rat, but that would have been an improvement. She was a drowned mouse. Not even half the size of a rat, and without the intimidation factor. She just looked pathetic.

I looked pathetic.

But Jake didn't comment on any of that, because he was talking. I guess maybe he was too nice to say what the truth really was. "Gabe and Lucas are jerks." He said instead, crossing his arms, making himself seem even bigger compared to me. His daemon, I still couldn't remember her name, seemed regal and powerful, the exact opposite of Venitas' current form.

The only form she could ever take, now.

Because she'd decided to settle. As a mouse. A striped mouse, yeah, and maybe if it was temporary, that would have been pretty cool. It would have been neat. If it was temporary. If. But it wasn't. She was stuck as a mouse, forever. The smallest of prey animals, the ultimate symbol of fear. Everything preyed on mice. The only people who were afraid of mice were teenage girls and elephants.

And she didn't even seem to care. She was the one that chose to become the mouse in the first place, instead of something that could fight back when our uncle got drunk, instead of something that could keep us safe. She wasn't horrified. She wasn't angry. She thought that this form was the best thing to ever happen to us.

She'd never tried to defend me, even though she could. Even though she could become any animal she wanted, she never did anything to protect me. She was too much of a coward. She tried to defend herself, tried to tell me that if she became something dangerous to protect me, then the other daemon would just become something worse, and the whole thing would just escalate out of control.

Better to take the smaller beating, she said, than to make things worse.

But she wasn't the one that had to take the beating. They could never touch her, because she always hid in my clothing, so that their daemons couldn't get to her. She wasn't the one that had to deal with the bruises and cuts. And I hated her for it.

And now she'd settled. As the most useless thing I could think of. And she thought it was a good thing. She thought it meant we were subtle and clever. She thought it would teach me something important.

But all it meant was that we were a coward. That she was a coward.

I looked at the bird of prey sitting on Jake's shoulder, so intense, so powerful, and I wished with all my might that I'd been born a daemon instead of the boy, so that I could change my shape and become something so beautiful and deadly.

But I was a kid. And my daemon had settled as a mouse. There was nothing beautiful or deadly about her. Even her name seemed like a mockery. Venitas, for Vanitas. A type of painting about death.

Because death was inevitable, and nothing we did could stop it.

She could have been anything. She could have been a wolf. A raven. A crow. A hawk. A snake. Hell, even a cat or a dog would have been cool. But no. She had to be a mouse. She had to shout it out to the whole world that I, Tobias, was a coward. That I, Tobas, was useless. That I was not even worth paying attention to. That I was a weakling who couldn't defend himself, so, please, come and vent your aggression on me. Use me as target practice. I can't defend myself, and even if I could, I won't, because the universe decided that the whole of my personality can be summed up by a goddamn mouse.

I don't really remember much of what happened next. My memory isn't very good these days, see, and at that moment, I was too absorbed in my own thoughts to pay much attention to anything going on around me.

I know that Jake escorted me to the nurse's office because I couldn't stop shivering, and because I just kind of zoned out and wouldn't answer him, which really freaked him out. He pretty much had to half-drag, half-carry me to the nurse's office all by himself. And after that, he was even nice enough to stick around until she finished her examination. They say that if you save someone's life, you become responsible for them. Maybe that's why he hung around in the nurse's office, even though he could have just gone back to class once I was out of his hands.

By the time the nurse was finished examining me, I was, I mean, I guess I was conscious again. Not that I remember falling unconcious or anything. I was able to tell her my name, and the day, and the current president, and I could tell her how many fingers she was holding up.

Aside from being chilled and tired, I was fine. At least, physically, but she couldn't exactly see the things that were wrong with the inside of my head, now could she? I get the feeling that if she'd known how I was thinking, she wouldn't have given me a clean bill of health so quickly.

Aside from sending me home early-which was absolutely not going to happen if I had any say in the matter, which, fortunately, I did-there wasn't anything she could do except offer me a cup of hot chocolate to warm up with. She asked who had done it to me, and I realized only too late that I'd already forgotten their names. It wasn't that I didn't want to snitch on them or anything-hell, I am a very firm believer that people should reap what they sow-I just could not remember their names, for all I wracked my brain for the information. And I hadn't really gotten a good look at them either, thanks to the whole sneaking-up-being-me-and-shoving-me-face-first-into-a-toilet-thing.

But Jake saw my helpless look, and told her that their names were Gabe and Lucas Jackson, brothers and identical twins, and she promised that she would contact the principal about the situation.

Yeah. As if that had ever solve anything.

But Jake seemed to honestly think it would get the jerks off my back, and even invited me to sit with him and his friend Marco at lunch.

It wasn't like I could turn down his offer, after he'd not only saved me, but also had the decency to make sure I didn't pass out on the bathroom floor and probably die.

So I sat with him and his friend at lunch, and tried not to stare with too much envy at their daemons when they chased each other around the table top, shifting shapes like the children they were. One moment, they were ferrets, the next, rats, the next snakes, and then cats.

I wasn't a child. I hadn't been for a long time, almost as long as I could remember. Jake and Marco? They didn't have anything to worry about. They didn't have anything to be afraid of. They left school every day and went home. I left school and walked into another level of hell.

My uncle didn't want me, and neither did my aunt. They'd made that painfully clear from the first moment I was able to understand their words. I'd been dumped on them by my no-good, useless mother when I was still just a baby. And now, every other year, they shuffled me off to one another. This year, it was my uncle's turn to begrudgingly feed and clothe me.

The only reason I hadn't run away already was because I knew that would just land me either in jail, or right back where I started, and in more trouble than before.

The only upside to living at my uncle's was Dude, the stray cat I'd kind of adopted. I didn't have an allowance, but some of the neighbors paid me a few bucks to mow their lawns or rake their leaves, and I used that money to buy cat food from the nearby 7-11. I'd also built him a little lean-to in the backyard using mostly sticks, and some plywood, and he liked to sleep in there sometimes.

Sitting with Marco and Jake, at least, meant that I could eat my lunch in peace. Any other time, I'd have to deal with jerks trying to steal my food or my lunch money, but not that day. That day, Jake and Marco joked and laughed, and their daemons chased each other and wrestled by our feet, and Venitas ventured out of her hiding spot in my shirt to perch on my tray, nibbling on a piece of crust from my cheese sandwich.

Marco spotted her, and leaned forward, putting his face uncomfortably close to her, so close that I could smell his onion-breath from the onion rings he'd just eaten. "Woah!" He exclaimed, "Dude, that is so cool!"

Venitas didn't even flinch, even when his eyeball was like, right infront of her. She actually smiled. "Thanks." She said, flicking her mouse ears. "I think so too."

Marco slowly leaned back to a normal sitting position, but only so that his daemon, whose name I later leaned was Macalia, could jump up onto the table to get a close look at Venitas.

Macalia was at that moment in the form of some kind of spotted frog, and when she hopped up from the floor and onto the table, I spotted a bright orange underbelly that I hadn't noticed before.

She hopped right up to Venitas, and peered at her with large brown eyes, her mouth hanging open a little, which made for a very strange expression on a frog. "Woah." She agreed with Marco. "You are cool. I've never seen a striped mouse before, do you know what species that is? Wait- you are a mouse, right?"

Venitas nodded, and put down her piece of bread crust so that she could spin in a little circle to show off. "Yep, I'm a mouse. But I don't know what species. Tobias here doesn't want to go to the library to find out, even though I settled weeks ago."

I felt my face turn beet red. She wasn't supposed to tell people that!

But Marco and his daemon just seemed to be even more impressed.

If Jake's cousin hadn't walked by at that moment, they might have spent the rest of the lunch period talking to Venitas. As it was, they both got distracted by Jake's distraction, as he watched his cousin walk past.

Specifically, he was watching her friend. A short- but not as short as Marco- and sort of stocky kid whose name I learned was Cassie. She was the complete opposite of Jake's cousin, whose name was Rachel. While Cassie was short and even more darker skinned than Marco, Rachel was pale, and so tall I almost couldn't believe it. She looked like she should have already graduated highschool with her height.

Standing in front of her, I would have had to crane my neck all the way back to look her in the face. And I was by no means short.

Cassie's daemon was trotting at her heels as a raccoon, and Rachel's? Rachel's was hanging over her shoulder like a scarf, or maybe a fancy hand bag, in the shape of a dark brown ferret, his claws hooked securely into her shirt to hold him in place as he casually conversed with the raccoon.

Venitas climbed on top of my shoulder to see what I was looking at, and she sent me an incredulous look when she saw the position the ferret was in. I just shrugged, and turned back to my sandwich.

Marco started teasing Jake, and I guessed that he kind of had a crush on Cassie. The rest of the lunch period went by without anything interesting happening.

And then the details get blurry again. Like I said, it's hard to remember boring stuff like school or walking home.

Of course, there was one walk home that I can never forget, and would never want to forget.

The night we walked through the abandoned construction site, and met an Andalite Prince, right in time to watch him die.

Okay, okay. Maybe I should back up a bit. It was a few weeks or so after Jake had rescued me from getting swirlied in the boy's room. I'd been hanging around the mall, not really shopping, just sort of window shopping and loitering. I didn't really want to go home, but I also didn't actually have any money to spend, or any more excuses to hang around. So I was getting ready to leave, getting ready to walk home alone in the dark. It wasn't like it was anything new, but still, I wasn't exactly looking forward to it.

But then, by chance, I happened to catch sight of Jake as he and Marco were leaving the arcade, and I decided I would tag along with them. Jake had let me keep sitting with him and Marco at lunch, so I kind of considered us friends, even though I didn't really interact much with them. Mostly I just ate my lunch quietly, while they talked about comic book characters and their latest high scores in their favorite video games.

Pretty soon, Jake's cousin, and his crush, Rachel and Cassie, joined up with us. Jake didn't want them walking home alone in the dark, you know, being girls and all. Rachel got kind of offended by his comment, and her daemon turned into a black cat and sort of hissed, sort of laughed, at Jake, but Cassie just smoothed things out before they could start to really argue.

So it was the five of us, walking home from the mall that night, when we decided that, instead of taking the longer, safe way, we'd take a short cut, straight through the old, abandoned construction site.

And it was while we were walking through there that I looked up at the stars, as though my gaze was pulled up by the clouds, by the moonlight, as though something were whispering to me, as though I'd done all of this before.

And we watched the Andalite Prince land. And we spoke to him. And he told us about the Yeerks. And he gave us the power to morph. And he gave us a task.

And then he died. Visser Three murdered him. Ate him.

And then we ran.

And the next thing I remember is waking up in my bed, fully clothed including my shoes, with the sky still dark outside. I don't know what time we left the mall, I didn't have a watch. But my alarm clock read 1AM. How long had it taken me to get from the construction site to my Uncle's house? How long had it taken me to fall asleep? How had I even managed to sleep, after all that had just happened?

I didn't know.

But I couldn't get back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried.

So I gave up trying. I crawled out of bed, tiptoed downstairs and past my uncle, sleeping in the living room in his armchair, cans of beer scattered around his feet. His daemon, Sennia, was draped across the top of the chair, twitching her ears in her sleep. She was a bat-eared fox, mostly drab grey colored, with black around her feet, and huge, rounded ears that looked like they were way too big for her head. I always jokingly referred to her as Mickey Mouse, not that I'd ever said that where she could hear, mind you. And with those ears, she could hear a lot.

I tiptoed very carefully past her, my eyes catching onto the familiar scars that crisscrossed her face. I knew the story behind them. Everyone who knew my uncle did. He never shut up about it.

When he was a kid, he and some of his friends almost got killed by some crazy serial killer when their car broke down out in the middle of nowhere. He'd slurred the story at me so many times that I practically had it memorized. He only ever talked about it when he was drunk, because I guess the memories were just too frightening to think about while he was sober.

Maybe it would have made me feel sorry for him, if he wasn't such a jerk to me. Maybe I would have felt bad for him, except for the part where he treated me like crap. He told me to my face whenever he had the opportunity that I was just a burden on his wallet, that he'd never wanted kids and how unfair it all was that I got dumped off on him like a stray dog.

It would have been enough to make me pity him, if I didn't hate him with every fiber of my being. Now I had memories that I didn't want to remember, but did I go around, taking my anger out on innocent little kids who hadn't asked to be born? No.

Past my sleeping uncle, careful not to kick or step on any empty cans of beer. Into the dark kitchen, and out the back door, shutting it carefully so it wouldn't squeak or slam in the wind.

And then I jogged to the edge of the property, where Dude's little lean-to was. He heard me coming, because before I was even halfway there, I saw his eyes glowing at me out of the darkness, reflecting the light of the street lamps and the porch light, which was always left on, even during the day time, even though it meant we had to buy new light bulbs for it every few months.

I smiled, and made little hissy noises to let him know it was me, and to get him to come out. "Pss pss pss. Come here, pretty kitty."

Dude crawled out of the lean-to and met me halfway there, practically invisible in the night except for his reflective eyes. He was a tabby, with brown fur and darker stripes, and sort a sort of tan colored belly, almost reddish, like pumpkin spice. He'd always been friendly, even when he was still skittish. All you had to do was crouch down, hold out your hand, and wiggle your fingers, and with only a moment of hesitation, he'd be coming over to headbutt your hand, purring up a storm.

I didn't want to think about what had happened just a few hours earlier, so I just sat down cross legged in the grass, and let him crawl into my lap, nuzzling my fingers and headbutting me in the side as I scratched him in his favorite spots.

Venitas stayed hidden in my shirt, and for once, that was fine with me. Dude was a nice cat, but he was still a cat, and even if he did recognize Venitas even in her newly permanent mouse form, it would still be too risky to just hope that he wouldn't try to eat her.

Eventually he'd have to get used to her new form-he was used to playing with her as a cat, sometimes a dog-but I just. I didn't feel like doing it right then.

She'd settled weeks ago, but I just kept putting it off.

I'll admit that I was being petty and vindictive about the whole thing. She'd settled in a form I hated, so I was using that against her. She'd never defended me, but Dude had. One time when my Uncle was yelling at me for getting the lawn mower clogged, and was getting all up in my face like he was going to hit me, Dude had just come tearing out of nowhere, got between the both of us, and started snarling at him.

Have you ever heard an angry cat? Just hope that if you ever do, you're not on the receiving end of that anger. My uncle ended up with a few claw marks to the hands that day, and I was almost afraid he would hurt Dude, but I guess he thought he had some morals or something, because he kind of just glared, and muttered something about not hurting animals.

It was good to know, then, where he drew the line.

He wouldn't hurt an animal, but he'd hurt a kid.

He wouldn't hurt an animal, but he had absolutely no qualms about hurting me.

So yeah. I was possessive of Dude. He'd protected me when no one else would, and he cared about me when no one else did. Venitas had settled in a useless, wimpy form. So that meant she didn't get to play with Dude for a while, and I didn't even care.

He was my cat. I'd been the one that built the lean-to, I was the one that did odd-jobs for the neighbors to pay for his cat food. Venitas hadn't helped with any of that. She didn't even help pick up sticks when I was trying to mow. She just sat on my shoulder or in my shirt, hiding in the stupid tiny forms she loved so much.

I sat there, and pet Dude, and just tried to forget about everything else. I tried to forget that my daemon had settled, that my fate was sealed. I tried to forget about the horrible way the Andalite had screamed in my head, I tried to forget the way I'd run away like a coward, leaving him to die by himself. I tried to forget the way Rachel had held my hand while I cried, even though she was already hugging Cassie, and had tears streaming down her own face. I tried to forget how it felt for someone else to care about me, and just focused on Dude as he settled into my lap like a purring, happy loaf of bread while I absently ran my hand down his back.

And it was then that something weird started to happen.

Dude stopped purring, and he sort of like...melted into my lap. Like he'd suddenly fallen asleep, but like, all the way asleep, not the usual naps cats took where they could wake up any second. For a second I felt my heart freeze in my chest, the sudden terror that he'd somehow just died flitting through my heart.

But, no-

I could still feel him breathing when my suddenly cold and trembling hand went to his side to check, and I was about to pick him up and go tearing into the house to get my uncle-because even though he was a useless drunkard who didn't give a shit about me, he liked animals, and if Dude was in danger, I thought that he might at least drive me to the vet's, or get someone else to, since he'd been drinking.

Another little ray of sunshine in his black cloud of a personality. He didn't drink and drive. He just got drunk and lazed around in his chair all day, shouting at me to get him more beer or complaining about how much money he had to waste on feeding me.

But just as I was almost to my feet, Dude startled a bit, and shook himself a little, like he was waking up. He got himself settled in my lap again, and started right back up with his purring, as though nothing had happened, as though I hadn't just almost died of a heart attack.

And it was then I remembered what the Andalite had told us before he died. The power to morph-all we had to do to use it, was touch an animal to 'acquire' their DNA.

Was that what I'd just done accidentally with Dude?

And all we had to do, to become the animal was...focus, right? Focus on becoming the animal.

I glanced around me, suddenly feeling uneasy in the pitch blackness of the night. The light from the porch covered about half the lawn, but it didn't extend to where I was currently sitting, shrouded in darkness.

I shivered, even though it wasn't that cold out, and decided I would go inside. Who knew what kind of prying eyes were hiding in the shadows?

I gently scooped Dude up into my arms without even thinking, but he'd never been comfortable with getting picked up, so he kind of flailed a bit in my hands before I had to set him down in the grass, otherwise he might have fallen and hurt himself. I rubbed his back to calm him back down, and after a few seconds of hesitation where he was clearly startled by my actions, he started purring again. "Sorry, Dude." I said, making sure to scratch him under his chin when he tilted his head up at me, "Forgot you don't like getting carried around."

I took a few steps back towards the house, patting my leg to try to get him to follow me since I couldn't just carry him. He did so happily, his tail held straight up in the air, and quivering with excitement.

He followed me all the way up onto the wooden porch, but when I opened the door to the kitchen, he hung back, peering into the house like he wasn't sure he wanted to actually go in. Then he jumped up onto the patio chair he liked to sunbathe on. "Pss pss pss." I coaxed, doing again that little hissy thing and wiggling my fingers. I wasn't sure where I'd picked up the sound, but it always seemed to get his attention.

He jumped back down from the chair and nuzzled my proffered fingers, but still seemed hesitant to enter the actual house.

Venitas decided to speak up, poking her head out of the collar of my shirt to sniff the night air. "Tobias," She said, as though I were an idiot, "Dude has probably never been in an actual house before. It probably looks like one big trap to him. He's not going to just follow you in. Shake his food bowl or give him some treats or something."

I hated to admit it, but she was right. And she knew it too. She shook her head at me in exasperation, before crawling back inside my shirt, where she curled up in one of the inside pockets that had been designed just for that purpose.

I grabbed Dude's food bowl from the corner of the porch, and shook it a few times as I stepped backwards into the kitchen, holding the door open with my foot.

His ears perked up at the sound of his food, but he still hesitated at the threshold.

After a few more minutes of accomplishing nothing but letting in a few moths, I gave up on trying to get him to come inside. It wasn't like I needed him there to do the morph, was it? Or at least, I didn't think I did…

So I put his food bowl back outside for him, pet him a few more times and told him goodnight, and then I went back inside, tiptoed past my still sleeping, drunken uncle, up the stairs, and into my bedroom.

I shut the door, and locked it for good measure. My curtains were already pulled, but, suddenly paranoid, I hung up a blanket over them just to be absolutely sure no one could see in. Only then did I turn my light on, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust, leaving me standing there squinting and suddenly blind like an idiot.

And then, when I could see without my eyes watering, I focused on Dude. I focused on becoming Dude, picturing myself turning into a cat the way Venitas usually changed shape-instantaneous, with only a flicker of a moment where you could see the change actually happen.

I pictured in my head what it would be like to be a cat, focusing with all my strength-

And suddenly I was falling.

Or at least, that's what it felt like. Really, I was shrinking. Shrinking down from my height of five foot something down to the height of a cat.

Venitas was startled, and tried to climb back out of the pocket she was hiding in. But I was shrinking too quickly, and suddenly my clothes seemed like something a giant would wear. They pulled away as I became small, and I found myself standing in a puddle of jeans and covered in a shirt that could have been a bed sheet, with Venitas squirming, tangled, trying to get out.

"Tobias!" She yelped.

But she yelped quietly, because our uncle was still downstairs. "Help me! I'm stuck!"

But I was still feeling vindictive. I was still angry at her for settling as a mouse. I could have stopped the morph right there, I could have helped her get untangled. But see, I felt it was fair. She was the one that always hid in my shirt in the first place. She'd gotten herself into the mess, so it was only fair that she be the one to get herself out of it again.

She wiggled and kicked around in my piled up shirt, complaining the whole time, and meanwhile, I was done shrinking, and was starting to grow fur.

It didn't happen all at once, the way a daemon's shape changing does. It wasn't one second I was a person, and the next second I was a cat. It was a slow, gradual thing. Or at least, it felt that way, while it was happening.

First I shrank. And then fur started sprouting out of my skin like plants growing out of dirt. It sort of itched, but it didn't hurt. It was like when a dentist was drilling your teeth-you knew that it should hurt, but it didn't. You could still feel it all happening, but without any of the pain.

While the brown-grey fur was still growing out of my skin, I felt my spine suddenly bend and stretch, forcing me to fall over onto my hands and knees as a tail came shooting out of my back. Except, it didn't have fur on it yet. So I had to stare as this disgusting, fleshy thing grow out of my spine. But within a few seconds, it had grown fur, so it wasn't as creepy to look at.

Then I got distracted as my ears slid to the front of my head, and my mouth bulged out, growing into a short muzzle. Whiskers popped out of the corner of my mouth. The last thing to change was my hands and feet, and my eyes.

And then, like a switch being flipped, I was no longer Tobias.

I was Dude. And I didn't know where I was.

First came fear. Something was wrapped around me, and I struggled against it, my paws getting mired in soft fabric that smelled reassuring, but was still trying to strangle me.

I did not like feeling trapped.

I kept struggling against the clinging, suffocating fabric, and finally managed to poke my head out of the opening at the bottom. I shimmied until I was completely freed, and darted a few feet away, just to be safe, and then cast my gaze anxiously around, searching, searching…

Anxiety clawed itself down my spine, and my fur stood on end. My tail proofed up and my ears fell flat against my head. The boy who fed me wasn't here, even though the clothing I'd been stuck in carried his scent. This whole place carried his scent, which would have maybe helped calm me down, if he was here with me. But he wasn't. I was all alone, trapped in an unfamiliar place, with no idea how I'd gotten there.

The last thing I remembered was sitting in the boy's lap as he pet me. Had he brought me to this place?

I cautiously began to pace away from the pile of fabric that had trapped me, being careful to keep and eye out for any threats, and walking very slowly so that I could be silent. I needed to explore this new place, even though it was scary. I had to find a way out, or at least make sure that it was safe.

I'd made it over to one of the walls that enclosed the strange new place, and jumped up onto a desk high above my head to get a better view of the room. And I was just starting to calm down again when something suddenly struck my chest.

"Rrrraaaaooow!" I leapt a foot in the air and let out a shriek of surprise and fear, my fur, which had started to flatten as I calmed down, standing right back up again.

By the time I'd landed, I was turned around to face the the way I'd come, my claws unsheathed, my ears pinned to my skull so they wouldn't be damaged, my teeth bared and a snarl ripping out of my throat.

There was nothing there.

I kept up growling, my wide eyes scanning every inch of the area. Something had attacked me, bitten or slashed at my chest with teeth or claws. I could still feel the pain, burrowing into my heart, making it hard to breathe, making my growl stumble and falter as I backed away, putting my back to the wall behind me so that attacks could only come from one direction. There was nothing near me. Maybe it had been a human, throwing rocks again. That had happened before...

But the pain just got worse. My whole body trembled with it with every second that passed. It was agony, coiling in my lungs and snaking its way through my veins with every frantic beat of my heart.

Dread like nothing I had ever felt before settled like a physical weight in my mind, and when it mixed with the pain, it produced horror so desperate that I wanted to scream. A low snarl that was more a groan found its way out of my mouth, and I sank to the floor until I was crouched over my feet, my legs trembling too much to hold up my weight. My tail twitched weakly behind me, trying to lash in agitation and fear, but too weak to do much.

The pain was so intense. The dread, like the entire world had ended, like everyone and everything I loved had just been ripped away from me, it was so visceral and heavy that I almost wished my heart would just stop beating so that the unbearable agony and sorrow would leave me alone.

I crouched there helplessly, panting and snarling and crying. I didn't understand what was happening to me. The room was empty. Nothing was there to be causing this pain. This wasn't some attack by an unknown enemy, this was something coming from inside me.

And then, in the stillness broken only by the terrified pounding of my heart against my ribs, the miraculous happened-

A voice.

A voice I recognized. But I couldn't put a name it. I didn't have a name for it. It was just a voice I recognized.

But no. That wasn't right, was it? Surely a name belonged to the voice now calling, calling, crying.

But the pain made it too hard to think, too hard to breathe. I couldn't focus enough to think of the thing's name.

Suddenly there was movement, the kind of movement that my eyes had evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to see. Sounds my ears had evolved to track.

The sounds of prey.

A tiny, rapid heartbeat. Tiny, gasping breaths from tiny, minuscule lungs. The scritch scratch of tiny claws on wood.

A mouse, injured and lame, emerging from the same pile of clothing that I had awoken tangled in, and, crawling across the floor towards me on shaky, unsteady, stumbling feet.

And it was to the mouse that the voice belonged. "Tobias! Tobias!" it cried, "Come back! Tobias, it hurts!"

It crawled and stumbled closer, still crying out. "Tobias! Tobias!"

Tobias. I knew that name. It was the name of the boy who-

…

The boy…?

No.

No, not the boy. It wasn't the boy's name. It was-

-It was my name!

I was Tobias!

I was Tobias!

It was sudden. Like a bolt of lightning. Suddenly I remembered who I was. I was Tobias. I was not Dude, I was Tobias. I was human, not a cat. I was only in the body of a cat. But I wasn't him, I wasn't Dude.

I was human.

And I had a daemon.

And I had just stretched our bond to the max.

Venitas! I screamed the word mentally, struggling with renewed vigour to get back to my feet. But it was so hard. My heart was pounding out of control, even as the pain began to fade. Venitas was still crawling towards me, releasing the tension between us. Our bond was like a rubber band, and I'd just pulled it so taught that it was close to snapping. Now it was relaxing as the distance between us closed, but the pain still lingered, like teeth in my throat, like a knife in my chest.

I got to my feet. I half jumped, half fell off my desk and onto the floor, and I was too frantic to let the cat's body do what it wanted. I crashed to the ground in an ungainly tangle of legs, and my chin slammed into the wooden floor hard enough to make stars dance infront of my eyes.

But that didn't matter, because the other pain, the deeper pain, that was almost faded. It was fading. I got to my feet again, and then I was racing across the floor on clumsy, human-controlled feet. I was human. I was human, and I had a daemon.

I tried to hug her, but it was like all of a sudden, my body was out of control. I wasn't moving with the cat's body, I was trying to move it like I did my own. So all I managed to do was fall flat on my face again.

Which gave Venitas plenty of opportunity to wiggle herself under my chin and curl up against the soft fur of my throat, pressing her whiskers into mine and sobbing uncontrollably.

If cats could cry, I would have joined her. But I wasn't a daemon, so I couldn't cry. At least not physically. But on the inside, I was. I was crying so hard. I'd never gone that far from her before, and all of a sudden, all those things I'd been thinking-about how she was stupid, and useless-they just felt so, so wrong. How could I have ever thought those things about her?

I began purring without even planning it, as though the cat's instincts knew what to do, how to express all the pain and joy I was feeling. I'd heard that cats purr when they were hurt, but I'd never seen them do it before. I guess it's sort of like crying is for humans-you mostly cry when you're sad, but you can cry because you're happy too. Maybe they mostly purred when they were happy, but could do it when they were sad too.

Either way, we just kind of lay there on the floor, curled up together for I don't know how long, me purring up a storm, and her sobs slowly fading down into hiccups as we hugged as well as we could for a cat and a mouse.

And finally, after probably far too long, I remembered another thing the Andalite had told us.

Stay in a morph for more than two hours, and you were trapped forever.

The rush of adrenaline was enough to raise me from my sorrow-induced stupor, and I once again stumbled to my feet, shoving away the cat's brain as far away as it would go, so that I had to focus just to move every muscle.

I had to transform back. I had to. I couldn't be stuck as a cat forever!

I tried to open my mouth to speak, and out came a garble of noises that I didn't even know cats could make. But none of them even remotely resembled humans speech.

I shook my head, and stepped away from Venitas, who was too exhausted to move after me.

I tried to speak again, but again it failed miserably.

And then, a sudden flash of insight stole into my brain. I couldn't talk like a human while I was in a morph, I had to use thought-speak, the telepathic language of the Andalites. All I had to do was focus on what I wanted to say, and who I wanted to say it to.

I focused with all of my willpower on my daemon. ‹Venitas, can you hear me?›

She jolted, then nodded weakly. ‹Okay.› I said, ‹I'm going to try to morph back. I'm going to try to back up, so I don't step on you or anything.›

She was too tired to respond one way or the other, so I backed up a foot or two, even though it made my heart burn with the memory of the pain of separation. And then I focused on becoming human, on the feeling of having hands, and toes, and the sensation of warm fur curled up right over my human heart.

I don't actually remember morphing back, though, obviously, I did. I think by that point I was just too tired to care. I'd only gotten a few hours of sleep, and add onto that all of the emotional turmoil ontop of what had happened at the construction site, and I think it was pretty fair for me to just kind of pass out on the floor once I was sure I was human again.

I only stayed conscious long enough to crawl back over to where Venitas was, and pull her to my chest. And then I was out like a light.

It was the pounding of my uncle's heavy fist upon my bedroom door that woke me up in the morning. "Tobias!" He shouted, his voice muffled through the door, "If you want to eat, get up now, or it's going to get cold!"

I jolted upright, and almost fell backwards as a wave of dizziness passed before my eyes in the form of little black dots. It passed after a few seconds, and I sat up again, more slowly this time.

Venitas had fallen to the floor when I sat up the first time, and she grumbled at me in sleepy annoyance.

I blinked, looking around in confusion, trying to figure out why I'd been sleeping on...the...floor…

"Oh." I said quietly, looking down at my hands as the memories of the last night resurfaced. "Oh."

It felt like that was the only thing I could say. Oh. I met an alien. Oh. I watched that alien get eaten alive. Oh. Earth was being invaded. Oh. The only thing standing between the entire planet and enslavement was...

Oh.

The only thing standing between the planet and certain doom was me, and a few kids from school that I barely knew.

"Oh." It almost came out as a sob.

Oh, the overwhelming mind of the cat, sweeping over my own thoughts and steamrolling them flat so that I forgot who I was, forgot I was human, forgot that I had a daemon.

Oh, the pain of separation, burning as hot as the sun contained inside my fragile little chest. Held back by ribs that felt like they were breaking and lungs that felt shriveled and dry.

I felt like I should have started to cry. But you can't just go on, crying. Eventually the human body just gives up, it doesn't let you keep crying. Like it was saying, 'Okay, you've had time to be sad. Now it's time to do something about it.'

I felt like I should have been crying, but I'd run out of tears. It was just fear and sorrow and pain, with no physical outlet.

So what could I do?

The entire fate of the planet was suddenly resting on my shoulders.

What could I do?

I didn't know. I sat there on the floor, and I didn't know what to do.

But I knew who would. I knew who would know what to do, and more importantly, would know how to get it done.

I remembered Jake, standing over me in the bathroom after rescuing me, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze steady and angry and concerned. I remembered Funera on his shoulder, staunch and resolute and fierce.

Jake would know what to do.

I got dressed in the same clothes I'd worn the day before, and shoved the eggs and toast my uncle had made into my mouth, and then I left for Jake's house, wishing I had a bicycle, and thankful that I knew the way. I'd walked home with Jake and Marco before that fateful night, and I had to pass Jake's house on the way to mine. So I knew the way.

The problem was it just seemed to take forever, walking there alone, with so many thoughts spinning around my head that I was surprised it didn't just fall right off.

I didn't know what to do. But I knew I had to do something.

I remembered getting to Jake's house, and getting greeted at the door by his older brother, Tom. Tom sort of looked like Jake, but bigger, and with darker hair. His daemon had settled three or four years ago, as a type of wild cat called a margay. I knew I'd been told her name at some point, but I never could manage to remember. I don't know why, but I just always have trouble remembering the names of daemons, even if I've had the person's name memorized for a while. I don't know. It just doesn't stick in my brain, or something.

Anyways, Tom let me in when I asked to see Jake, his daemon staring up at me curiously with her almost too-big eyes. Margays aren't exactly the coolest cat around. They're actually pretty weird looking, if you ask me. I wouldn't go so far as to call them ugly, but they definitely weren't pretty.

Not that I'd ever say something like that out loud, of course.

Tom showed me up to Jake's room since he was apparently still sleeping, then left me alone to take a phone call.

Jake opened his door when I knocked, and he looked about as bad as I felt. His clothes were rumpled, obviously slept in. His hair was sticking up in every which direction, and there were dark circles under his eyes that had absolutely nothing to do with tiredness.

"Hey, Tobias." He said blearily, looking at me like he was confused. His daemon was trotting over to us as a calico cat, her fur ruffled and her entire body drooping.

"Hey, Jake. Funera." I said, trying to sound casual. The paranoia of the night before had stuck around, and I didn't want to take any chances of someone overhearing something they shouldn't. "Can I come in?" I was already pushing my way past him before I'd even finished saying the words, being very careful to give his daemon a wide berth so we didn't bump into each other.

I made sure he shut the door, and I went over to his windows to pull the curtains shut.

He just sort of seemed like he was in some kind of daze, like he thought he was still asleep. Or like he was trying to pretend he was still asleep.

I couldn't blame him.

But I also couldn't let him pretend the whole thing hadn't happened. I couldn't let him pretend we didn't know what we knew.

Earth was being invaded. And we were the only ones that knew it was happening. We'd been given the power-the responsibility-to do something about it.

"I did it." I said in a whisper, once the windows were shut, and the door was locked. I could tell he wanted to pretend he didn't know what I was talking about, but I didn't give him the chance to keep up the farce. "I morphed Dude-my cat, just like the Andalite said we could. Don't say anything, just-watch."

I stripped myself of clothes, to avoid getting tangled again. It was embarrasserassing, standing there naked, but if this would help keep me in control of the morph, if this would stop me from feeling that agony and dread again, then it was worth it. Jake just kind of stared at me with horror the entire time. I tried to ignore that little detail. Venitas waited on the floor a foot or so away, far enough that she wouldn't be stepped on.

And I once again morphed into my cat. The process seemed to take longer this time, probably because part of me was fighting the changes. I still remembered the agony of the night before, but I fought my way through it. I would remember who I was this time. I wouldn't forget myself. I was focusing so hard on maintaining control that I don't even remember the morph itself, just repeating over and over again in my head, My name is Tobias. I am human. Venitas is my daemon. I am human.

I am human. I am human.

I felt the morph complete. And I felt Dude's mind, his memories and his instincts, like they were my own. But they didn't overwhelm me this time, didn't completely overwrite my personality.

‹I'm okay.› I said, directing the words to my daemon. She sighed in relief, and wasted no time in scurrying over. I crouched down so that she could hop up onto my back, and she nestled herself securely in between my shoulder blades.

Then I looked up at Jake. He was pale. His eyes were wide, and after a moment, he just sat down heavily on the edge of his bed.

Funera had frozen stiff as a statue, still a calico, staring at us with eyes as wide of saucers. For a moment, she looked just like Tom's daemon. Then, slowly, hesitantly, she started creeping towards me, caution in every line of her body.

‹I'm still me,› I said, to both Jake and his daemon. ‹I'm still Tobias.› I didn't like the way Funera was coming at me, like she'd forgotten I was a person.

That got her to stop in her tracks. Apparently she had forgotten. I shied away, wanting to put distance between us. Touching someone else's daemon isn't just a casual thing. Usually it's only close family members that are allowed to do it, mostly moms and dads when their kid is still a baby. But siblings sometimes did it, to show affection. Or at least, that's what I'd heard, anyways. I was an only child, and if my aunt or uncles daemons had ever comforted me, I didn't remember it.

It kind of freaked me out, the idea of that Jake's daemon might trust me enough to try and touch me. I'd only known them for a few months, and next year, I'd be getting shipped back to my Aunt on the other her side of the country. I couldn't afford it to get that close to anyone. It would just make leaving all the harder.

‹I'm still me› I said again, carefully sitting down by Jake's fet so I could look up at him. Venitas clutched ahold of my fur with her tiny paws to keep from falling. ‹But...›

I shuddered. ‹We're going to have to be careful. The first time I did it...it was like I actually became Dude. I forgot who I was. And Ven was tangled up in my shirt, so I didn't even notice her at first. So I...I accidentally walked beyond our bond. I guess being in a smaller shape must have, I dunno, shrunk it or something. Or maybe it was because Ven is a mouse, so the relative distance got wider. All I know is that I got to one end of my room and it felt like I'd gone a hundred feet.›

Jake looked sick. "Are you guys okay?" He looked me over with his eyes, as though the he pain might have left a physical scar.

I just shook my head. ‹I'm okay now, but just...we need to make sure the others know to be careful. You need to be careful.›

He blanched, and shared a frightened glance with his daemon. But he didn't try to deny the truth. It was staring him in the face. We'd all touched that blue box, so if I could morph, so could he, and so could Marco, Cassie, and Rachel.

Jake's daemon jumped up into his lap, and made herself bigger so that she could nuzzle under his chin without having to stretch. "We need to do this, Jake." She said softly.

He stroked her back, nodding as he pressed his face into hers. "Yeah." I heard him mutter reluctantly.

‹Ven, I'm going to demorph, so hop off.› I told my daemon in private thought-speak. She obligingly crawled down off my shoulder, and backed away to a safe distance.

When I'd finished demorphing back to my own body and pulled my clothes back on, Jake went over and opened the bedroom door without a word, then disappeared into the hallway. Funera stayed sitting on the bed, though, so I knew he wasn't going far.

And I was right. Just a few moments later he re-entered the room, a sleepy, but happy, Homer trailing at his heels. Homer is Jake's dog, a golden retriever who never seemed to be in a bad mood. He was wagging his tail before he even saw me, and then he just grinned a doghy grin and came bounding over to me, his entire body wiggling in his excitement.

Thankfully, he was well trained, and didn't jump up at me. Instead, he danced around my feet in a circle a few times, before sitting down and staring up at me with dark, adoring eyes.

I bent down to pet him, and smiled as he held out a paw for me to take.

Jake closed and re-locked the bedroom door, and shoved a pillow infront of the bottom edge for good measure.

Then he came over, much slower than Homer had, and sat down on the floor next to me, crossing his legs beneath him and leaning one elbow on his knee to prop up his chin. With the other, he scratched Homer behind the ears. His expression was intense, focused on something only he could see.

For a while, neither of us said anything.

But while Homer was in doggy heaven from all the attention, Jake's daemon was slowly stretching up on the bed, putting her paws out infront of her as far as they would go as she stuck her butt in the air, tail twitching, then stood up and curved her back to the sky as she stood on her toes, fluffing all her fur up. Then she yawned.

And when she was finally done stretching, she transformed, in the blink of an eye, into a small tan songbird with a dark cap of black around its head, like a bandana. I don't know what kind of bird she was, but she was pretty small, barely bigger than my hand.

She came over to land on Jake's shoulder, and almost as soon as her little talons touched his neck, the hand he'd been scratching Homer with stilled. His expression shifted. Less serious, more resigned, more open, more afraid. He let his hand drop.

"This is really happening, isn't it?" He said softly.

I felt somehow that I wasn't actually meant to answer him, so I didn't. I just concentrated on petting Homer.

Jake sighed a little, and his shoulders drooped. Funera changed again, this time into a peregrine falcon, apparently one of her favorite forms.

It was weird. I was watching when she transformed, going from something small and light to something bigger and heavier.

It was like the extra weight sort of balanced him out. Gave him something to hold onto. He straightened his shoulders, he sat up straighter. The look of resignation on his face changed to one of determination. All without a single word spoken by either of them, and his daemon had completely changed his whole outlook on the entire situation.

He reached out again towards Homer, and dug his fingers gently into the soft golden fur. Homer closed his eyes in bliss.

I was prepared for it. So when Homer suddenly seemed to melt to the floor, I was ready, I caught him.

"It's okay, they just go into a trance when you acquire them." I said, when Jake seemed like he was going to start to panic, "He'll be fine in a few seconds. Won't even realize anything happened. Just keep concentrating on him. He'll be fine."

I thought for a moment that Jake would waver, that his fear would overcome his determination. But then Funera dug her talons into his shoulder just a little bit, and his eyes went steely again. He turned his attention back to Homer, his face set in concentration, his fingers moving now in a gentle petting motion. I guess he was trying to comfort Homer, even though he wasn't even awake. Or maybe he was apologizing. I don't know.

Finally, Jake pulled away, flexing his fingers like they'd fallen asleep. And about ten seconds after that, Homer sat up, tail wagging and mouth open in a grin like always, never even seeming to mind that he'd just been unconcious for almost a whole minute.

I was about to suggest that Jake try morphing him, but suddenly there came a knock on the still-locked and closed door, making me jolt, and Jake stiffen. Homer, of course, just went on grinning and thumping his tail against the floor innocently.

"Jake?" Tom's voice, muffled through the wood. The doorknob rattled, then stopped in apparent confusion. "You realize your door is locked?"

Jake was instantly on guard, but when he spoke, he didn't let it show in his voice. "Oh, whoops. I must have bumped it by accident." He got up to open the door, leaving me sitting on the floor with Homer.

Tom was standing in the doorway when Jake opened it, his eyebrows raised as he took in the scene. I guess he was expecting us to be up to something nefarious, like maybe doing drugs or something, since we had the door locked, but instead he just looked in and saw me sitting on the floor, petting the dog.

Homer turned to look at him over his shoulder, and thumped his tail a little louder against the floor, grinning widely in that way that only dogs can do.

Tom snorted and shook his head. His daemon, at his feet, rolled her dark, too-big eyes. "Whatever." Tom said, shrugging off Jake's excuse, "Like I care what you two midgets get up to. Anyways, Marco's on the phone for you." He held out a tan, cordless phone, which had one of the buttons near the bottom blinking a slow, steady green that indicated the line was busy.

Jake took the phone. "Did he say what he wanted?"

Now it was Tom's turn to roll his eyes. "Didn't I just say I don't care what you and your friends get up to?" I thought it sounded kind of mean, but then he reached out and ruffled Jake's already messed-up hair, making it look even worse than before. He smiled, and it wasn't a mean smile.

Jake ducked out from under the offending hand, but he was smiling, too. He seemed lighter. "Yeah, yeah, yeah." He said sarcastically, "You're too cool to hang out with us middle-schoolers now that you're in highschool. Go on, get out of here, before our uncool-ness rubs off on you."

The words were spoken with an ease that made me think they were part of some inside joke I wasn't privy to. I dropped my gaze from the two brothers, feeling suddenly left out.

Tom left after a few more sarcastic but not mean remarks, and Jake shut and locked the door again. He held the phone up to his ear. "Yeah, Marco?"

I could only hear one side of the conversation as Jake came back over to sit with me on the floor again. "Well, I've got Tobias here, but other than him, yeah."

Jake apparently got tired of sitting, because he let himself drop down backwards, until he was lying on his back on the carpet, staring up at the ceiling. Funera changed back into a cat, and bread-loafed on his chest. You know, that thing where cats tuck their paws under them so it looks like they don't have any?

"We're in my room. Look, Marco, why don't you just come over? It'd be easier to talk strategy in person. And we can do some level grinding in the meanwhile. We definitely need to be stronger before we can take on the boss."

For a second, I was confused. But then I realized they were speaking in code. It wouldn't exactly be a great idea to go blabbing about the alien invasion of Earth over the phone, now would it?

After that, I kind of zoned out for a while, just petting Homer.

When Jake suddenly nudged me with his foot, I was so startled that I almost fell over. I realized that I'd almost fallen asleep sitting up. I smiled sheepishly, and Jake just shrugged. "Tobias, you look terrible. You should take my bed, get some sleep."

It's funny, because I don't actually remember agreeing, or getting up from where I was sitting on the floor. But obviously, I did, because I suddenly woke up what felt like hours later, curled up on Jake's bed under the comforters.

It took me a few seconds to track, to figure out why I'd woken up.

But then I realized that it was no longer just me and Jake in the room-he'd invited all the others over. Marco had just sat at the foot of the bed, jostling it enough to wake me up. Macalia was a rattlesnake wrapped around his throat, her tail vibrating, filling the air with the threat of venom.

He did not look happy. I sat up against the headboard, pulling my legs to my chest so that Venitas could crawl out of my shirt and perch on them, to better see the room. I was kind of embarrassed, getting caught sleeping in a stranger's bed. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes as fast as I could.

Cassie and Rachel were just entering the room, with Cassie in the lead, her daemon likewise wrapped around her neck, but as a small python instead of a rattler. Rachel came strolling in after her, and actually had to duck to avoid smacking her head on the doorway. It was seriously weird, looking at her. I mean, girls just normally aren't that tall. I think she might have been the tallest person in our grade, or maybe even the entire school. Tom was taller than Jake, and even he didn't have to duck into the room.

It would probably be hilarious to see her stand next to Marco. Compared to me, Marco was short. Compared to Cassie, Marco was still short.

Compared to Rachel? It'd be like comparing a mouse to an elephant.

Anyways, Rachel's daemon was draped across her shoulders, in the form of the dark brown ferret that he had been in when I first saw her, and, on second thought, the same shape he had been in at the construction site. Was he settled? I tried not to make it too obvious that I was staring at him. It would be nice not to be the only one in the group who had already settled.

But I was too nervous to ask. Despite the fact that I had cried on her shoulder at the construction site, I barely knew her, and it wasn't like you could just go around asking perfect strangers if their daemon's were settled or not. Besides, I had cried on her shoulder. That was seriously embarrassing, extenuating circumstances like watching an alien get eaten alive right in front of you or not.

Rachel shut the door behind her, and then her daemon let himself roll off her shoulders. He didn't jump. He didn't step. He just rolled to the side, and let himself fall off her shoulder. In mid-air, he turned into a black swallowtail butterfly, shattering my hopes of having something in common with anyone else in our strange little group.

I looked around at all of them. I looked at Rachel, who was a stranger to me. All I knew about her was that she was Jake's cousin, and Cassie's friend. And all I knew about Cassie was that Jake liked her, though he pretended like the rest of us didn't know that. Marco I knew only barely, more from osmosis from sitting at thes same lunch table than any real interaction. Jake, I knew he best, but even that was a shallow basin of water. I'd been to his house once, and I'd walked home with him and Marco a few times, and we sat at the same table at lunch, but that was pretty much about it.

I didn't know these people. And they didn't know me.

Rachel shut the door, and went to stand next to Cassie, her daemon fluttering in circles around her head like a dark halo. Or the Confusion status effect, now that I think of it...

The room fell into silence. Not awkward or uncomfortable, just tense. We all knew what needed to be said, what needed to be done, but we didn't want to say it.

And it was by unspoken but unanimous agreement that we all looked to Jake to say it.

He was the one that connected us all. If not for him, rest of us wouldn't even know each other's names. Rachel was his cousin. Cassie was his crush. Marco was his best friend. And as for me, well. I guess I was his friend. I know I counted him as on of mine.

I thought for a second that Jake would back down, buckle under the pressure as he realized that we were all looking at him-Looking to him.

But his daemon sat as a falcon on his shoulder, and gave him strength.

Jake sucked in a quiet breath, and spoke. "Okay, guys. I know this whole thing seems impossible. But we need to break it down, we need to set up some ground rules, some guidelines. We can't just go running off unprepared we need to-" his mouth twisted. "We need to really think this through, before we even think about doing anything."

From what I could see of Marco with his back to me, he seemed like he wanted to argue. His daemon had finally stopped rattling her tail, but you could see how tense she was. But Marco said nothing, and his daemon also remained silent. I saw Rachel frowning, and Cassie nodding. I just sat where I was, quietly agreeing. I'd learned the hard way what could happen if we just rushed into this thing without thinking.

When no one made any move to argue, Jake seemed to relax a little. He looked around at us. "Okay. Show of hands-who's practiced morphing so far? And who, or what, did you morph?"

I raised my hand before he was even done speaking, drawing the gazes of Cassie and Rachel. Marco turned to glance over his shoulder when he saw them looking. "My cat, Dude." I said.

There were a few seconds of silence. Then Cassie raised her hand. "Sweetheart." She said, then added on as an explanation when she caught my confused look, "One of our horses." Right. Cassie lived on a farm. I'd heard Marco mention that once-he was joking about how Jake was going to have to learn to grow crops and raise chickens if he wanted to marry Cassie. I can't remember what Jake said back.

A moment, a beat. No one else raised their hand. It was just me, me and Cassie.

Jake nodded, like he'd been expecting that answer. "Okay." It seemed to be his go-to word when he was in leader-mode. "Okay. Has anyone one acquired any animals, but not morphed yet? I acquired Homer, but I didn't have the chance to actually morph him."

Again, Cassie raised her hand. She looked kind of hesitant. "Um." She said, then, sucking in a breath and counting off on her fingers, "I acquired a duck, a wolf, a golden eagle, a skunk, an opossum, a garter snake, a chicken, a squirrel, a fox, a doe, a vulture, and a bobcat."

We all just stared at her. She hunched her shoulders up around her ears in a sort-of shrug. "I mean, we've got tons of animals in the clinic. And I was giving them their meds anyways, so I figured, why not? I mean, we might need a lot of different forms if we're...if we're really going to do this."

This. Fighting off an alien invasion. Nice way to put it. Made it seem so simple. This.

If only.

Marco finally spoke up, his worse clipped and tight. "That might not have been a good idea, Cassie. We have no idea if there's a limit to how many animals we can 'acquire'. That means you have…" He frowned.

"Thirteen." Cassie volunteered, guessing what he was thinking.

"Right. And how do we know if the limit isn't like, twenty or something? Or more like twenty four?"

I had to interject. "Because the Andalite would have told us that. He wouldn't have told us about the two hour limit, and then not told us that there was a limit to how many morphs we could acquire. Especially if it was such a low number." That should have been obvious, right? If there was a limit, he would have told us.

Marco twisted to look at me, his expression cold and angry all at once. He scoffed, like he was disappointed in me. "You can't know that, Tobias. The guy was dying. I don't think he was thinking as clearly as he could have been. I mean, he told us about all of his stuff, instead of like, the President or something." he turned back to Jake. I'd never seen him so serious. I...wasn't sure I liked this new Marco. "We need to assume that there's a limit to how many animals we can acquire. If we just go around acquiring everything we come across, we could end up with a bunch of stupid forms that won't be of any use at all."

I let my mouth fall shut, realizing he was right. If we were really going to do this, whatever 'this', was, we needed to be smart. We had to err on the side of caution. We didn't really know if there was a limit or not, so assuming that there wasn't one could turn out to be a deadly mistake.

Marco shook his head, even though no one had said anything to contradict him. Maybe he was just trying to get his thoughts in order or something. "First thing's first-like you said, Jake, over the phone. We need to level grind-we need to practice. Tobias and Cassie have already morphed, but the rest of us don't even have anything to morph into. So we need to each acquire an animal, but we need to be careful. Thanks to Cassie, we know that we can at least go up to thirteen, but we don't know how many we can go beyond that."

Cassie didn't try to defend herself, but she also didn't look like she was embarrassed or mad. I'm not sure what she was thinking.

The meeting went on, with mostly Jake and Marco bouncing ideas off of each other. Jake, because we'd all declared him the leader, and Marco, because he just got straight through to the point. Nevermind all of the ways this could go horribly wrong, nevermind how insane this all was. He focused on what needed to be done, and what needed to be done to get it done. Every now and then, Rachel or Cassie tossed a few words in, but the plan itself was pretty simple.

We would all go over to Cassie's house, both because of her barn full of animals, and because their property was huge, and free from nosy neighbors. We would have plenty of animals to acquire, and plenty of privacy to get to 'level grinding' as Marco insisted on calling it.

Basically, we were going to go find out how exactly morphing worked, and what the limitations were.

From what I had experienced, we knew that the animal mind could overwhelm our human mind if we weren't careful. We knew that it could take us so far into the animal's personality that we forgot who we were. When I told them that I completely forgot who and what Venitas was, the room got quiet and scared.

No one wanted to experience that horror for themselves. Which meant that we had to be careful.

All of the others had bicycles except for me. But Jake asked his brother Tom if I could borrow his for a few hours, and Tom made some snarky comment about me not messing it up or anything, but in the end, he let us take it, with just a warning not to scratch the paint or change any of the gears. He was joking...I think. Maybe,

We set off up the quiet road, Venitas hiding in my shirt like normal, Funera riding on Jake's shoulder, Macalia wrapped around Marco's handlebars, Cassie's daemon somewhere I couldn't see, and Rachel's running along at her side as a black panther.

It had been years since I'd ridden a bike, and I realized after about not even five minutes had passed that there is a massive difference between walking somewhere, and riding a bike.

Yeah, it was way faster. Especially when we got to the parts that sloped downhill. But it also worked muscles in my legs that weren't used to being worked.

It wasn't like Jake was leading us along like a speed demon, but we were still moving at a pretty good pace, and after ten minutes of straight pedalling, I had to call out to the others, and beg them to stop and let me rest. I was panting like I'd just run the PACER test, and my legs were so tired that they were shaking when I finally came to a stop near the curb. The others had to double back to get to me, and none of them were even close to being out of breath. It wasn't fair. How did they do it?

Once I'd sort of gotten my breathing back under control, we set out again, albeit this time at a much slower pace. And I still had trouble keeping up.

By the time we got to the end of Cassie's long, long driveway twenty minutes later, my legs were so far past tired that I didn't even get off my bike. I just fell over. My legs just gave up on me, and I couldn't keep pedaling. So as soon as the bike slowed down enough that I could no longer keep my balance, I just fell right over onto the dirt and gravel. I was behind everyone else, so they managed to miss it, but then Rachel's daemon-who'se name I learned was Tinyel-happened to glance back, and immediately let out a cry of alarm.

I just kind of lay where I had fallen, the bike half on top of me because at the last second, I'd tried to jump off. But I was too tired to move. My legs were like jello, and if you've never been so physically exhausted that your legs literally cannot support your own weight, you can't even begin to understand what that really means.

I heard brakes screech and gravel crunch as the others braked, alerted to my situation by Rachel.

Her daemon-Tinyel-ran over to me, still as a black panther, accidentally kicking loose some rocks that came over and smacked me in the face. But his expression was so filled with concern that I couldn't be annoyed. I was also sort of concerned for him, since he'd gone awfully far from Rachel to reach my side. But she'd already turned her bike around and was heading back towards me with the others behind her, so even if the two were in pain, it wouldn't last that long.

"Are you okay?" His voice surprised me, though I'm not sure why. It was much gentler than I'd been expecting. Although I'm not even really sure what I was expecting, so I didn't have anything to compare it to. But the kindness in his voice, the concern shining at me out of his bright yellow eyes, it was surprising.

I don't know why. Jake was nice to me. But it was different with Jake. Jake felt like he was responsible for me or something. Jake felt sorry for me.

Rachel and her daemon didn't even know my name before last night. And now he was running to check one me even if it meant going farther than normal from her.

What did that mean? That he circled around me, and turned into a bear so that he could lift the bike off of me, before she was even ten feet away? What did it mean, that he turned into a dog and stopped only a few inches away, and sniffed at me to make sure I wasn't hurt, because I hadn't actually answered him, before she was even there to lend me a hand to help me to my feet?

I thought back to the way Funera had approached me before, when I'd morphed into Dude, like she'd forgotten I was a person, like she was going to come over and investigate me like I was any normal cat.

And in my head, I replaced Funera with Tinyel. Jake with Rachel.

And suddenly, the situation had a whole new light.

While Rachel helped me to my feet, Venitas crawled out of my shirt, miraculously uninjured after our fall. She crawled down my arm and onto my pant leg, where she crawled the rest of the way to the ground.

Tinyel immediately became a small black rat, putting the two of them at almost-eye level. But I didn't get to see their interaction, because I almost fell back over again once Rachel let go of me. She had to grab me so that I could stay upright, and once again I was just kind of overwhelmed by how tall she was. Standing next to her, with one of her hands wrapped firmly around my arm to keep me from falling over, I had to tilt my head all the way back just to see her face.

I can just remember that moment, when I was looking up at her. The sun was behind her head, creating a glowing halo of light, and casting her face in light shadow. Her eyes were as blue as the sky, and when she smiled, her face became as soft as a cloud.

And when she smiled, she smiled at me.

She helped me walk the rest of the way to the barn, where I collapsed onto a pile of hay and just lay there on my back, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for feeling to come back into my legs. Venitas perched on top of my chest, nibbling on some sunflower seeds Cassie had given her.

Since she was smaller than I was, it would be easier for us to regain some energy if she had something to eat. It wouldn't be the same thing as me eating a meal, it wouldn't stop me from getting hungry, but it would help boost my energy and help keep me going for a little longer without passing out.

Cassie told us everything she knew about the animals she had in the barn, and finally, it came time for Jake, Rachel, and Marco to all pick an animal to morph for the first time. Cassie and I had already done it, so we knew what to expect. But the others didn't. Thankfully, Marco had pointed out that we were only acquiring the animal's DNA, so any wounds that it had wouldn't be transferred over to our morph. Which meant that we could acquire any of the animals in the barn without having to worry about their injuries.

Rachel chose first, and I sat up against my hay bale to watch as she paced through the huge, crowded barn, examining the animals in their cages like a general inspecting her troops.

Finally, she and her daemon-currently in the form of a border collie-stopped in front of one of the larger cages in the area where birds were kept. It was a bald eagle who'd been shot in the wing, and had fallen and gotten electrocuted on a power line. They still hadn't found who'd shot it yet, but the park rangers were all in a tizzy over it. Apparently, this specific eagle was famous, pretty much their mascot for the national forest. They had cameras set up in its normal hunting spots and at its nest, so that people could watch it in its natural habitat.

I was expecting some really cool, dramatic name, like Thunderbird or something. But it turns out her name was just...Sue.

Sue the eagle.

Cassie tried to explain that it was spelled s-i-o-u-x, named after an indian tribe. But I mean, even if you gave it that fancy spelling, it was still a bald eagle named Sue.

How dumb could you get?

But Rachel seemed enamored the second she laid eyes on the eagle, and declared that she wanted to acquire it as her first morph.

Cassie spent a few minutes lecturing Rachel on what to and what not to do when she got the eagle out, and even after that, she still insisted that she be the one to hold it. Rachel would be allowed to reach out and touch it, but Cassie had to be the one holding it. And if Cassie said to, Rachel had to back off immediately.

I mean, I get that this was a bald eagle we were talking about, and they were like, endangered and stuff, but I really didn't see what the big deal was. Once Rachel acquired it, it would just fall unconcious anyways, so what did it matter who was the one holding it?

By the time Cassie got out special gloves, and finally started opening the cage, Rachel was pretty much vibrating with excitement. She was bouncing up and down on her heels, and her daemon was up on her shoulders as a ferret again, running back and forth from one shoulder to the other so quickly I was surprised he hadn't fallen off yet. It was like they couldn't even hold themselves still, they were so excited.

Cassie sent them a stern look, and almost immediately, they both stilled. Only then did Cassie reach in and gently half pull, half coax the eagle out. She held its feet securely but gently in one gloved hand, and its beak in the other. And all the while, she was whispering to it, soothing it with nonsense words like it was some kind of giant, feathered baby.

Rachel reached out slowly when Cassie nodded at her that she could, and her eyes were shining with barely repressed excitement. Her daemon was quivering on her shoulder, his fur standing on end and almost seeming spiky for a few seconds before he suddenly flattened it again.

Rachel's hand gently traced across the eagle's injured wing, before carefully pressing her fingers into the feathers at its breast. She didn't close her eyes, or give any other sign that she was concentrating, other than her daemon, who had frozen still as a statue, but suddenly the eagle fell like a sack of potatoes into Cassie's arms, and I knew that she'd succeeded in acquiring it.

While Sue the eagle was in the acquiring trace, Cassie's daemon-I still didn't actually know his name-surprised me by turning into a lemur, and jumping up onto her shoulder, a syringe clasped carefully in one hand.

And then he took the syringe, and injected it into the eagle's neck. And then proceeded to very quickly check on and change the bandages that were taped to the eagle's wing where it had been shot.

It was done so quickly and efficiently, that by the time Rachel pulled her hand away, and the eagle began to stir, Cassie's daemon was sitting at her feet again, having resumed the racoon form it had been in before becoming a lemur.

She just shrugged when she realized that everyone-except Rachel, who didn't look surprised-was staring at her. "It's easier to give them their meds this way." She said, carefully placing the now-fully awake eagle back in its cage. "Why do you think I acquired so many in the first place? I'd like to see you try to shove a pill down a wolf's throat."

She pointed towards one of the cages on the far side of the barn, that held, lo and behold, a wolf. It had bandages wrapped around its face and covering its left eye, and one of its ears was so torn up that it was practically gone. It was curled up, sleeping peacefully. Supposedly, thanks to the medicine Cassie had administered to it earlier that morning.

Next up, it was Marco's turn to choose a morph. He'd been the one to recommend that we each get at least one bird, so that we couldn't ever get trapped or lost anywhere. Plus, flying would be faster than walking or riding a bike. He stopped for a while infront of the cage holding an osprey, but eventually just shook his head, and went over to where a crow was being kept instead.

According to Cassie, the thing had crashed straight into a car window. I tried not to laugh at the mental image of Marco flying into a windshield.

Once he acquired the crow, it was Jake's turn to pick a bird. Cassie already had several, so after Jake it would be my turn.

Jake picked the peregrine falcon that had apparently just been brought in the day before with a broken wing. Absolutely no one was surprised by this, since it was one of Funera's favorite forms.

As for me, I choose the red-tailed hawk who'd also broken a wing. Incidentally, he'd broken it getting into a fight with the peregrine falcon, when they'd gotten their talons tangled and both crashed to the ground. Talk about irony.

But anyways, the red-tailed hawk.

Ever since I could remember, it had been one of my favorite animals.

It also brought up another flash of bitterness in me towards Venitas. No matter how many times I begged her, she would never turn into one. She always insisted on staying small, on staying helpless.

I felt the anger slowly rising up in me again as I stood there, holding my hand against the warm feathers of the bird of prey. The bitterness had disappeared for a time after I'd morphed Dude, but now it was slowly fading back into my mind, like ink blotches spreading across a piece of paper.

Venitas at least had the decency to hide in my shirt so I wouldn't have to look at her as I finished acquiring the hawk, and Cassie administered its medicine and checked on its injuries before it could wake up from the trance. She really seemed to be taking advantage of this whole thing.

And then, finally, it was time to test our our new morphs.

I volunteered to go first, partly because I was excited beyond belief to become my favorite animal, and partly because I was really starting to feel annoyed at Venitas all over again. It was like morphing Dude had temporarily erased my anger towards her, but now it was all coming back.

I wanted to fly. I wanted to stretch out wings that she'd always refused to take, I wanted to be strong. Stronger than she could ever be, stronger than Dude. I wanted to be free. Free from my Uncle, free from the bullies at school, free, even, from Venitas, who had always held me back, held me down.

The only attention I paid to the changes, when I started the morph, was how right they felt. It felt right for me to have a sharp, deadly beak. It felt right to have ripping, tearing talons for feet. It felt right being a predator for once, instead of prey. It felt right that I was turning into a creature that would happily eat a mouse for dinner.

I was being vindictive, and I didn't care. I was being cruel, and I didn't care one single, tiny bit.

This time, I was prepared for the new mind that would come with the morph. This time, I didn't forget who I was. Instead, the hawk's mind rose up beside mine, and we were equals.

In more ways than one.

The morph was complete. And the first thing I did, the first thing that popped into both our minds-was to fly.

I spread my four foot wingspan, and went straight up. Dust and loose straw kicked up into the air with each powerful stroke of my wings, and Venitas, who had started crawling onto my back, was knocked loose to fall to the ground.

Straight up. I didn't stop until I'd reached the high roof of the barn, above the hayloft. The bare rafters stretched below me, and I landed on the widest one with ease. My sharp talons dug into the wood, and I glared down at my daemon so far below with the fierce and angry gaze of the hawk.

I wanted her to be afraid. This is what she should have become-something strong and wild and free. But instead, she became a mouse. She became prey. She became insignificant.

She became useless.

My gaze, so sharp it was like a laser, pinpointed the real hawk, far below me in his cage. Rage filled my human brain, and sorrow filled mind of the hawk.

He hated being in a cage. He knew, on some level, that Cassie wasn't going to hurt him, knew that she was trying to help him. But he hated being in a cage. He hated not being out under the open sky, hated the way he couldn't fly, could barely move the wing he'd broken.

He couldn't really understand the concept of medicine, or healing. He didn't really understand that once his wing was healed, he would be free again.

He was depressed. He wanted to escape. He wanted to be free.

I wanted to be free.

My eyes found the open window built into the wall. I lifted off the wooden beam. I opened my mouth, and let out a cry that sent every animal below me cowering in fear. The hawk in my mind didn't understand what it meant. The only sounds it knew were meant to show where its territory was, or to find a mate.

But I let out a cry, and it had nothing to do with the hawk part of my mind.

It was anger, defiance, and frustration. It was all of the things I couldn't say when I was a human. It was the way my Uncle would never hurt an animal, but had no qualms about hurting me. It was every cutting remark about how I was a burden, how I did nothing but waste his money. It was every sneer and laugh and jeer of every bully who had ever laid a hand on me. It was the betrayal of my daemon refusing to defend me. It was everything that had ever gone wrong, wrapped up into a single emotion, given sound and amplified by the twin pools of hopelessness that flooded my mind.

I looked at that open window.

I spread my wings.

And I flew.

I don't know how long I flew. I don't know far. I didn't care. I was flying. I was free.

But eventually, reality caught back up to me.

Reality caught up to me in the form of a shadow suddenly passing over me.

The hawk's instincts screamed in fear. The human ones told me to look up.

I looked up. And I saw a bald eagle spiraling down towards me.

I knew, instantly, that it was Rachel. Call it instinct. Call it common sense.

It was Rachel.

‹Tobias!› she cried in my head, as she spiraled ever closer, ‹Tobias, can you hear me? It's Rachel! Answer me!›

I don't know why, but I didn't feel like answering. I wanted to pretend I couldn't hear her, pretend I was lost in the mind of the morph.

But then I remembered her daemon, running right up to me without hesitation, checking to make sure I was okay. I remembered Rachel's smile as her face was framed by a halo of the sun.

I didn't want to lie to Rachel.

‹Yeah, Rachel, I can hear you.› I said sullenly.

She swooped down infront of me, just one of her wings bigger than my entire body, and pitch black against the glare of the sun. Clinging to her back were two shapes-one almost as black as her feathers, and almost invisible. And, barely visible as it was, pinned between that dark shape and Rachel's darker feathers, was a small, striped mouse.

Venitas.

Either she was keeping her eyes shut because she was afraid of heights, or she wasn't conscious. Rachel's daemon was a bat, clutching at her feathers as it held my daemon securely in place beneath the shelter of its body.

My daemon was touching Rachel.

Rachel was touching my daemon. She had carried my daemon on her back in order to bring it back to me.

Someone was touching my daemon.

And I felt nothing.

Someone was touching my daemon, and I didn't care.

Rachel could drop my daemon and let her fall to her death, and I knew, in that moment, that I wouldn't care.

Rachel knew I'd seen Venitas. But she didn't know how indifferent I was to the sight.

‹Tobias, I'm so sorry. But I didn't have a choice. You need to come back, or, or at least-you need to land. You have to demorph, Tobias. Venitas fell unconcious because she was in so much pain. You need to land. You need to demorph.›

She flew in a circle around me, slicing through the air like she'd been born in it. Above me, below me, behind me, in front of me. She cut through the air with her broad black wings. Getting closer and closer with every sweep, so that I had to dodge to avoid crashing into her.

It took me a long minute to realize that she was caging me in, herding me towards the ground. I looked down.

There were trees stretched out below us as far as the eye could see, glowing green in their shiny new spring leaves.

And then Rachel cut infront of me again, and I had to flare my wings and come braking to a stop in mid air. I let out a cry of anger and surprise, my human mind taking over my reflexes for a moment.

‹Stop that!› I snapped once I'd regained control over the hawk's body. I folded my wings and dove beneath her next attempt at blocking my path, but then I realized that that was just putting me closer to the ground, which is what she wanted. In response, I spread my wings wide and caught a thermal, shooting me straight up on the pillar of hot air.

I didn't want to land, or demorph. I didn't want to go back to my stupid, useless human body. I wanted to keep flying. I wanted to stay free.

The hawk agreed. He was tired of being caged.

Depending on how you looked at it, it was either fortunate, or unfortunate, that Rachel was around three times my size. She saw me go shooting up past her, and she reacted so fast I didn't even see it happen.

One second I was rising through the air, light as a feather.

And the next, there was a flash of black and white, and suddenly, I was falling.

Huge talons closed like steel cables around mine, crushing them together and all but ripping my wings off at the sudden weight they were trying to hold up.

The wind tore past me as I plummeted from the air, forcing my wings back straight up towards the sky, like an inside-out umbrella. Rachel had used her talons to grab mine, and folded her wings into a dive.

To put this in perspective, Rachel's bald eagle morph weighed maybe thirteen or fourteen pounds.

My red-tailed hawk? At most, two and a half.

Seven times my weight, seven times more than my wings were ever meant to carry.

All of her weight, with almost zero wind resistance, dragging me like a rock down through the ripping, tearing, roaring wind.

The pain in my talons was sharp. The pain in my wings was worse.

And all the while, the hawk's mind was panicking, flipping out. This was how it had broken its wing in the first place. It had locked talons with a peregrine falcon, and plummeted to the ground.

My human fear combined with the hawk's recent trauma, and it built and built and built until I finally had to let it out. A shriek came tearing from my beak at the same time as the senseless, wordless scream flew out of my mind as thought-speak.

‹AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHH!›

But Rachel didn't let me go, didn't hesitate even as the trees below us suddenly rose up, far too close for comfort, and getting ever closer.

I finally had to just shut my eyes, the fear just became too much.

When Rachel flared her wings and brought us to an abrupt and screeching halt, I slammed right into her back, driving the air from my lungs and almost slamming directly into both of our daemons.

But Tinyel took Venitas in his arms at the last second, and pushed off her back, somehow managing to hold my daemon even while he opened his leathery bat wings to drift slowly down beside us.

I was sprawled across Rachel's broad back, and all I could see was blue, and the barest edges of black when her feathers rippled in the wind.

Tinyel landed again, and turned into something I couldn't make out with just the corner of my eye. It pressed Venitas into my side, and then wrapped some sort of limb around me, holding me in place against Rachel's back so I couldn't slide off.

And, still, I felt nothing. None of the sparks that were supposed to fly when you touched someone else's daemon, or someone else touched yours. No electrical current, no rush of emotions that didn't belong to me, no pain, no fear, but no joy or comfort either.

There was just nothing.

We were moving down, I knew that without having to see below us. She was gliding us down in a long, wide curve, heading back the way I'd originally come, back towards Cassie's farm.

Where I would be expected to demorph, to return to my human body, to return to the ground, to return to my cage.

I didn't want to go back.

And when Rachel spoke, it was almost as though she'd read my thoughts. Considering the fact that just a few seconds ago, she'd been holding my daemon, she might have been.

‹Tobias, listen to me. You aren't thinking clearly. You told Jake this happened before, right? You forgot who you were, forgot about your daemon. You're human, Tobias. You're not a hawk, you hear me? Your name is Tobias, and you're human, and you have a daemon. Her name is Venitas, and she was so hurt by being apart from you that she lost consciousness. Do you understand me, Tobias? Your daemon is unconcious.›

I knew what that meant. Everyone knew what that meant.

And I still didn't care. I searched through my mind for the feelings I knew were supposed to be there, for the pain and the fear and the sadness.

All I found was nothing.

My daemon was unconcious. I didn't care. It was like the part of my mind that was devoted to my daemon just didn't exist anymore.

When your daemon is unconcious and you're awake, it's a bad sign for your health. Unless cedarwood or other anesthetics or medicine are involved, your daemon should only ever be asleep when you are. There's no one thing that it means when your daemon sleeps while you're awake, but none of them were good.

Brain damage, PTSD, exhaustion, depression, even mental retardation...the list went on.

And all of it was bad.

‹I'm not retarded.› I said quietly. I didn't want to even acknowledge the other potential reasons. ‹It's just-this morph...›

Rachel didn't say anything. But I felt her flight falter for just a second. But only for a second.

‹I know, Tobias..› She said finally, quietly. ‹That's why you need to demorph as soon as we land. It took me a while to morph, and even longer to find you and catch up. You've been in morph for over an hour and a half, Tobias. That's way too close to the two hour limit. As soon as we land, you need to demorph. Alright, Tobias?›

She kept repeating my name, as though to remind me who I was.

But I wasn't really telling the truth when I said that it was the morph making me act this way. I knew who I was. I hadn't lost myself, or my memories. I knew who Venitas. I knew who I was.

I just didn't care. It wasn't even anger anymore, it wasn't bitterness. I just didn't care.

They say the opposite of love is hate.

They're wrong.

It's indifference.

I could feel Venitas pressed against my side, could hear her rapid heartbeat, and turn my head to look at her. Her face was twisted in agony, even in her sleep. Her heart was beating too fast, even for a mouse.

And for all I cared, Tinyel could let go of her and let her fall to her death. But I wouldn't go so far as to make her fall-no, because that would have required effort, would have required that I care enough to make her die. And I didn't even feel that much towards her.

I knew this was wrong. She was my daemon, my soul. I was supposed to care about her. But even knowing that couldn't make me feel anything for her.

I turned my face back towards the sky. The hawk and the boy both wanted to focus on that, on that endless, clear blue.

We landed a few minutes later. I watched the blue sky get torn away, and replaced with the dark wood paneling of the roof of the barn as Rachel swept us through the open doors.

She came to a slightly awkward stop, skidding on the smooth floor of the barn, careful to keep her wings outstretched, and her body hunched forward, so that I couldn't fall off.

Then Tinyel oh-so-gently picked me up with hands that suddenly belonged to a monkey, and placed me on the cold concrete floor, with Venitas nestled carefully against my side.

The human in me wanted to just lie there, pretend to be dead. But the hawk was agitated and afraid-hawks weren't meant to lie on our backs like this, and especially not on the cold, hard ground.

So I opened one wing to lever myself onto my stomach, and from there, I pushed myself to my feet.

Immediately, Rachel was in front of me, towering over me, seven times my weight, and several times my size.

She bent down so that we were seeing eye to eye, her beak almost bigger than my entire head. Hey eyes were bright, searing yellow. Her voice commanding. ‹Demorph, Tobias. Right now.›

Behind her, I saw the others standing, huddled together, whispering, shooting glances towards us. Every one of their daemons was pressed close to their skin, wrapped around their necks or wrists or nesting in their hair.

I looked back at Rachel.

I thought of the way her daemon had come running up to me.

Did I really care?

But she took a step forward, her talons clicking against the concrete, reminding me just how dangerous she could be in this morph. I couldn't fly away, couldn't try to escape. If I did, she would just catch me again, and this time, she wouldn't be so gentle.

I didn't have a choice.

I began to demorph.

Rachel didn't even flinch when it became apparent that I was emerging from the morph completely naked. She didn't look away, just locked her blazing eagle eyes with mine and didn't even blink until the transformation was complete, until the feathers had turned to patterns against my skin, until those patterns had faded, and my eyesight grew dim and weak, until my bones stopped shifting, until I felt heavier without my hollow bones, until I was standing up on my own two human legs, staring down at a bird just barely bigger than the average house cat.

I looked down next to her, to where Venitas lay still against the floor. Tinyel had wrapped himself around her as a black snake.

I wondered if he knew about the sudden desire I had to step on her, just to end this whole thing.

I think he did, because he opened his mouth for a few seconds when he looked over at Rachel, letting me see the glittering white fangs that adorned the inside of his mouth. I don't think snakes were even meant to have that many teeth. He looked more like a shark than a snake, but I wasn't going to argue. The threat was there. Don't tread on me, he said, without speaking a single word.

Jake came over, and stepped between me and Rachel, probably in an attempt to spare her eyes the torture of seeing me naked. He held out a pile of clothes that I recognized as mine.

I got dressed. I picked up Venitas when Tinyel finally moved away, winding his way up Rachel's slowly-emerging human legs.

Cassie and Marco-who had his eyes tightly shut-came over and held up a large, opaque drop-cloth around her before the morph could progress any further than that, granting her the privacy I'd been denied.

I held my daemon to my chest, cupped gently in my hands so I wouldn't squish her by mistake. She was slowly starting to wake up, slowly starting to realize where she was.

She began to cry. And some human part of me, buried deep, began to cry with her. Tears welled up in my eyes and fell down my cheeks, but still I felt nothing for her. Nothing except annoyance. She was the reason I'd had to demorph, she was the reason I wasn't allowed to stay flying free forever. I was crying more from frustration than sadness.

The indifference was fading with every beat of my human heart. But with the loss of the indifference came the bitterness, came the anger.

Some part of me realized that morphing was affecting me, affecting my mind, affecting my bond with my daemon. Morphing into Dude had made me care more about her than I think I ever had before. Morphing the hawk had just...completely erased her from the part of my brain that cared about things.

I still knew who she was, what she was, but all of the emotions attached to her were gone. She was a speck of dust, a blip on the radar. Not worth a single shred of attention.

But now I was human again, and now I cared.

But it wasn't the 'right' sort of caring. I didn't love her, I hated her. I didn't want her to be happy, I wanted her to be as sad as I was.

This was my default, I realized. This was who I was, when nothing else was affecting me. This was really who I was. The boy who hated his daemon. The boy who would rather hurt her than protect her. The boy who would rather become an animal and abandon her than accept the fact that she'd settled as a mouse.

I thought of Rachel, and her daemon. She hadn't abandoned him after morphing into the eagle. She wasn't being affected by the minds of her morphs, it was just me.

I was so messed up that the minds of animals could sway the very foundation of my personality to two very different extremes.

I went back to the bale of hay I'd used before, and sat down cross-legged, my daemon still cupped to my chest.

I hated her. I hated her so much. She'd never done anything to protect me. She'd never done anything to help me. She never did anything to make me smile. But the indifference of the falcon was gone now, entirely. I couldn't let her get hurt. That would just hurt me.

And some part of me knew that hurting her on purpose was wrong, even if it felt right. Felt fair.

So I held her gently to my chest, while tears that seemed to be nothing more than instinctual fell from my eyes. I said nothing as the others huddled together, still holding up the sheet around Rachel as she slowly demorphed, spooked, frightened, too afraid to go on with our plan now that I'd ruined it so spectacularly.

They all had their daemons pressed so close to their skin that it seemed like they wanted to fuse together. They cared about their daemons in a way I didn't, a way I couldn't. It wasn't just self preservation that made them protect each other-they loved their daemons in a way I didn't.

None of them wanted to morph after what I'd just done. They thought I was like them, thought that what I'd done was an accident, something that could happen to anyone, could happen to them.

But then Rachel's head popped up over the top of the sheet-none of them were tall enough to hold it up high enough to cover her fully-completely human once more.

Cassie tugged the sheet from Marco and Jake's hands since they still had their eyes closed, and handed it to Rachel, who wrapped it around herself like a giant towel. Marco and Jake immediately went to the far side of the barn, where the horses were kept, and made themselves busy by petting a black one that stuck its head out to sniff them.

Cassie went over to the table where Rachel's clothes had been carefully folded, picked them up, and carried them back over to where Rachel was waiting, her daemon sitting patiently at her feet as a border collie again.

She took her clothes back with one arm, the other holding the drop-cloth up around her body. Her gaze unerringly found mine. "Eyes closed, Tobias." She said, sounding calm. Not angry, not embarrassed, just…calm.

I wondered how much of it was an act.

I closed my eyes, and let myself fall backwards to face the ceiling for good measure.

They hadn't given me any privacy when I demorphed, but I hadn't really give them much of a choice in the matter. If they'd turned away for a second, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would have turned around and tried to fly away again.

But I was human now. Again. I could give them what they hadn't given me. Just like I could still protect Venitas, even though she'd never protected me. Maybe it wasn't what I wanted, but it was the right thing to do, even if part of me questioned why I even bothered.

Hurting Venitas would just cause me pain. Spying on Rachel getting dressed because I'd had no privacy when I demorphed would…just be creepy. It wouldn't change anything, except for the worse.

Rachel got dressed, and Marco and Jake came back over, and Cassie said that maybe they shouldn't practice any more morphing for the day. But Rachel insisted that they had to keep trying, they couldn't let one accident ruin their plans. She hadn't abandoned her daemon when she morphed, and now they knew what could go wrong, they would be more careful. The others still had to practice morphing. And one thing they could do to stop what had happened to me from happening to them was simple-

-Shut the barn doors, and close the windows. Or better yet, morph inside one of the larger cages designed for wolves and deer, and that way, even if the animal mind took over, they wouldn't be able to get far at all. Nowhere near far enough for it to hurt. And this way, they'd be safe until they could get control over the animal mind.

The others weren't easy to convince. They were still skittish and, honestly, traumatised. It would take more than some logical sounding words to break through their fear.

But Rachel didn't give up, she kept telling them that it would be okay, that she was fine, that her daemon was fine, that what had happened to me wouldn't happen to them as long as they really concentrated on staying in control. And even if they couldn't do that, if they lost control, forgot who they were, they would be in a cage, they wouldn't be going anywhere. Their daemon would be right there, right outside, to call them back to themselves.

Eventually, her confidence gave them strength. Her bond with her daemon was as strong as ever, so theirs would be okay too.

They just had to be strong, because I was weak.

I knew that's not what she was trying to say. That she wasn't trying to blame me. But that's what it felt like, that's what it meant.

Probably because part of me felt guilty. I'd flown off like that on purpose. I'd left my daemon behind on purpose, even though I knew that it was wrong. I'd hurt them by forcing them to watch Venitas' agony because of my decisions. It was later explained to me that there was something called second-hand trauma. Watching something traumatic happen to someone else could be just as traumatizing as it happening to you. Like, watching someone get hit by a car could be just as bad as being in an accident yourself.

I'd put them through Venitas' agony, I'd forced them to watch as I stretched my bond until it broke. I'd done that to them, whether or not I'd intended it or not. So of course they were wary of morphing-of doing what I had done. They didn't know that what I'd done hadn't been an accident. They thought it could happen to them too.

Eventually, though, they gave in. Rachel stood strong for them, and let them draw from her strength, her conviction. Eventually, they agreed to morph in a cage, with their daemon waiting outside. Jake tried to ask why they couldn't have their daemons inside with them, but then Cassie pointed out that if they really forgot who and what they were, their daemons could be in danger. A wild animal would just think they were a threat. And a scared animal was a dangerous one.

So, eventually, they agreed.

I stayed where I was, up on my hay bale, staring up at the ceiling, my daemon curled up in an exhausted slumber over my heart, tears rolled out of my eyes and into my hair.

Their morphing went without a problem. For a few minutes, each of them did forget who they were. They had to struggle with the animal's instincts and memories, but after a few minutes, they remembered who they were, and what they were. There came the sounds of wings buffeting steel wire, and a few frightened shrieks and caws, but eventually they settled down, got control. I heard their daemons whispering assurances through the bars of the cage, and their encouragement and joy when they were recognized.

Jake went first as his peregrine falcon, then Marco as the crow, then Cassie, into her vulture morph.

A few minutes of fear, of animal instinct, and then they were back to themselves. Piece of cake. Nothing like what had happened to me. Nothing like what I'd done.

After getting control of the animal's mind, they spent another minute in the cage, just to be absolutely safe. Then they were let out, to stretch their wings a bit and get used to moving around in a new body.

It was easier for them than it had been for me. When I'd first morphed Dude, and finally got full control, it was like I was pulling the strings to the wrong puppet. Even though I was in a cat's body, I tried to move it like it was a human one. If I was in total control-like they were now-it was like plopping a human brain into an animal's body. None of the signals went where they were supposed to, none of the limbs moved the way they were meant to.

Back in Jake's room, I'd had to keep a careful balance between my mind, and the cat's. I had to let it be in control, ever so slightly, so that I could walk without feeling like my legs were the entirely wrong shape to move.

But not for the others. For them, within minutes, with complete control, gushing excitedly about how cool it was the entire time, they moved like they'd been born in those bodies. Even though I stayed lying on my back looking up at the ceiling, I could see them when they took to the air, doing laps around the wide walls of the barn and performing tricks in mid-air. A few feet over my head, Jake in his peregrine falcon morph spun like a missile, then turned around so fast that if I'd blinked, I would have missed it.

I could never have done that in my hawk morph, not if I had full control. Which I hadn't, despite the arguments I'd made while morphed. The hawk had been partly in control, it had had a voice in every decision, it had shown me how to flap my wings to fly, how to twist and turn my tail to keep my balance. I hadn't been in control, not fully. And even if I let the hawk have complete control, it could never move the way they were. These were maneuvers no animal would ever imagine doing without human intervention.

Somehow, in some way, I was different from the others. Maybe it was because my daemon had already settled-that whole idea about teaching new dogs old tricks. Their daemons could still change shape, so maybe that meant they could adapt to new bodies faster than I could.

Or maybe it was much simpler than that, and there was just something wrong with me.

I closed my eyes again, and sighed, and tried to block out the sounds of cheerful bird-calls and laughter.

After they all demorphed and were human again, we planned out a mission to infiltrate the local zoo. Thanks to Cassie, we knew that we could acquire at least thirteen morphs, but aside from the wolves, the barn really didn't have much to offer in terms of combat ability. As Marco put it, we needed some "Tanks". Something that could take a hit. Something that could tangle with one of the walking Salad Shooters and come out alive.

And to do that, we needed to go to the zoo.

I say "we" planned out the mission. But mostly I just kind of zoned out nodded when someone asked me something. I'd been so ready to do this whole thing when I first woke up. But now it was like-could we even do this? Could I even do this?

Now I wasn't so sure. It wasn't just how I'd acted while morphing the hawk. It wasn't just the realization that morphs affected me on some deep, personal level. I was weaker than the others. They could morph without a problem. Becoming birds for them didn't make them completely indifferent to everything that made them human. Supposedly, Cassie morphing into her horse hadn't done any lasting damage, or she would have told us about it. I was just a liability.

I went with the others to the zoo to acquire stronger morphs, but I wasn't planning on actually getting close enough to any of the animals to acquire them.

Morphing Dude had made me care for my daemon in a way that was painful now that we were back to normal. Morphing the hawk had made me so indifferent that I considered stepping on her. I'd considered stepping on my own daemon, ending her life, and mine with it.

I didn't want to know what would happen if I morphed anything else.

So I went. But I made sure not to acquire any other animals, and when Cassie and Rachel tried to convince me otherwise, I just insisted that I was fine with what I had.

I knew they weren't happy about it. Rachel, in particular, was angry at me for being so, as she called it, irresponsible. There was no way a hawk would be able to fight the way the animals they were acquiring could. But I didn't give in. "I'm happy with just the hawk," I repeated, over and over, trying to convince myself as much as I was them. But I knew the truth-as a hawk, I wouldn't be able to fight, not really. Sure, maybe I could dive-bomb people if we were in an area with a high enough roof, or outside, but I didn't have the kind of stopping power they were looking for.

They needed something that could hit an enemy, and keep them down.

And I knew, I knew, even as I insisted that everything would be fine, that I wouldn't be able to do that.

I was doing worse than lying to them. I was letting them down. Telling them that I would watch their back, while knowing 100% that it was a lie, that I would be no use in a real fight.

I knew it. And still I refused to change anything. I was too afraid to morph anything else. So I didn't.

I don't remember leaving the zoo. The next thing I remember is falling asleep, for what would be the last time, in my bed at my Uncle's house.

And then we were down in the Yeerk pool.

And then we were down in hell.

I don't remember going down there. I remember demorphing from the hawk, but not morphing into it in the first place. I flew down, already morphed, that's what the others told me. That's what Jake told me when I asked. But I don't remember it. I don't remember making the decision to morph before we started the mission. I don't know why I did it. I don't know how I was brave enough to do it.

But what I do remember morphing into the hawk again when I was hiding in some half-built shack. I don't remember morphing the first time, but I remember doing it the second time, after the others ran off and left me to hide by useless myself. Rachel had acquired an elephant, Jake a tiger, and Marco a gorilla named Big Jim. They were fighting, trying to rescue Cassie, who'd been kidnapped by a cop-Controller.

And I?

I didn't have anything that could fight. I had Dude, and I had the hawk. Neither would be able to knock down Hork-Bajir and keep them knocked down. Neither would be able to fight Taxxons without being eaten alive.

And my human ears were filled with screams. My human nose was filled with the stench of unwashed bodies. My skin was on fire with the heat and press of too many people. My human mind was overcome with the horror of human suffering.

And Venitas was in my pocket, sobbing. She couldn't fight. She couldn't do anything to protect these people. She couldn't open those cages that people were screaming in, screaming for help, screaming for mercy, or worse, screaming for death.

The others-they could help. Their daemons were fighting right alongside them, Funera as a tiger to match Jake, Tinyel as a shining white wolf darting around beneath Rachel's tree trunk feet, Macalia as a jaguar as black as the night. Their teeth and claws were ripping into Hork-Bajir and Taxxon flesh with a desperation born of terror. They were fighting, they were killing.

It hadn't been anything more than a hunch, it hadn't meant to be tested this soon, and in combat no less. It had happened back in the barn, before we went to the zoo.

But Rachel had told the others how, when she'd carried my daemon, she hadn't felt anything. It was like Venitas was just a normal mouse, not a daemon. So, they theorized, maybe when they were morphed, they wouldn't get hit with the wall of emotions that normally happened when you touched someone else's daemon, or someone else touched yours.

We all knew that daemons could touch animals without anything happening. That was just a fact of life. Before she'd settled, Venitas had played with Dude all the time, wrestling and chasing each other like siblings.

So maybe, while we were in morph, we were far enough away from being human that the same rule would apply to us. Maybe, while we were in animal morph, we could touch people's daemons like we were normal animals.

Something that would be invaluable, Marco pointed out, if we ever had to go on stealth missions.

Tinyel volunteered to be the test subject. He volunteered to be the one that someone touched while they were morphed. It would be easier for him, he said, because he and Rachel had already done the same with Venitas. It took a lot of debate, a lot of awkward, embarrassed, nervous glances, before it was finally decided that Jake would do it. They were cousins, family, so if they were wrong, if they did still get hit with all that emotional feedback, at least it wouldn't be too weird.

Jake morphed into his peregrine falcon, and then, so nervous that he was shaking like a leaf, he hopped over to where Tinyel was sitting as a black cat on the floor, hesitantly spread one wing, and brushed it against his side.

He jerked back a moment later, but apparently from sheer reflex than anything else. His breast was heaving in the falcon body, and he was still shaking. But after a moment of hesitation, where Tinyel nodded at him, he reached out again with his wing, and this time held it against the daemon's side.

This time he didn't jerk away. After a few moments, he relaxed.

‹It's okay, guys.› He said. And his voice was shaking, still nervous, still embarrassed. ‹It's okay. I don't feel anything. It's okay.›

And then came the question-Yeerks were people. They were sentient. But they weren't human. So...what did that mean? What would happen if one of our daemons touched them? Obviously, our daemons couldn't ever come into physical contact with a human-Controller. Not only would that probably be debilitating, but then the Yeerks would find out who we were.

But the question remained-what would happen if our daemons touched a Hork-Bajir? Or a Taxxon? Or God forbid, Visser Three himself?

A question that hadn't been answered until a Hork-Bajir came charging at Rachel's legs, swinging blades, drawing blood. A question that hadn't been answered until Tinyel, as a shining white wolf, leapt upon that Hork Bajir and tore him to shreds with jaws that seemed too big, and paws that seemed to turn into clawed hands to better rip and shred. And then he was up and away, lunging towards a Taxxon that dared to get too close. He ripped him open like a water balloon, and somehow, when the putrid guts went flying, he managed to keep his fur as shining white as snow.

And that signaled the end of play-time. That signaled the end of playing by the rules, of fighting fair. Now Macalia was leaping straight for the throat of any alien-Controller that tried to attack Marco, now Funera was roaring along with Jake, so loud that you could feel the sound vibrating in your bones. I don't know where Cassie and Alexander were, if they were still a captive, or if they were joining the fight.

But I knew one thing. I was be next to useless in this melee. And so was Venitas.

She couldn't do anything. Not to protect those people, and not to protect me. She couldn't wrap me up in warm scales, or wings, or fur. She couldn't grow into a wolf or a tiger or a jaguar to rend and tear at the enemies around us. All she could do was huddle on my naked shoulder, and cry.

We were in hell.

And I just wanted it all to go away.

Like those people screaming in their cages, I just wanted it all to be over. There was too much fear, too much anger, too much pain. I could smell the guts of Taxxons spread across the floor. I'd watched Hork-Bajir be crushed to death under Rachel's feet, turned into a bloody pulp of flesh and bones. I'd watched Marco punch one in the stomach, and watched it puke up blood as he was turning away to face another enemy. I'd watched one of Jake's victim's struggle to crawl away while holding a useless, broken arm to its shredded chest, leaking blood and worse across the floor. They were aliens, a part of my mind tried to scream, just aliens. But it didn't work. It didn't matter. It was all too violent. It was all too real. I wasn't even in this fight, but I wanted it to end. I didn't want to care anymore, I didn't want to see anymore-I just wanted to be free.

I just wanted to be free.

So I hid, in the shadow of one of the half-built shacks, and I heard Venitas cry harder than ever. I don't know why I'd morphed the first time. I don't know if I managed to keep my feelings for my daemon intact.

But I knew, that second time, what I was doing. I remember every detail. I knew what I was doing, and when I felt my care for my daemon start to slip away with every beat of my heart, I let it happen. I welcomed it.

Anything was better than the suffering I was going through right then. Apathy was better than agony. Freedom was better than being caged. Anything was better than the horror show happening just a few dozen feet away.

I picked her up, and held onto enough of my sanity not to squeeze her to death, once the morph was complete. I flew us the dark side of the cavern, where construction hadn't yet started. Far away from the fighting, far away from the gore and the violence and horror. I hid us in a crack in the wall, where no one would find us.

And in my head, I counted down the time.

And in my claw, my daemon begged me to change my mind, to change back, to find somewhere else to hide, to not leave her.

But I clung to the apathy of the hawk, and let my humanity fade away with every beat of my bird heart. I didn't want to feel the terror coursing through my human veins. I didn't want to see replays of what I'd just witness behind my human eyes. I didn't want to be human anymore. It was too much. It was all too much.

This felt right, I told myself, when Venitas bit at my feet to try and break through to me. And it was true. It felt right, having a ripping, tearing beak. It felt right, having talons that could crush the life from my prey. It felt right, being able to fly faster than the fastest human could run. In some way I couldn't describe, it felt more right being a hawk than it did being a human. And it wasn't just the mentality of it-it was something physical. Something real in my soul felt more comfortable with natural weapons than without.

Later, long after the others had escaped, Visser Three flaming after them as some alien monstrosity, I left my hiding hole, and carried my daemon up through the hole in the roof of the cavern high above. I didn't spare a single glance for what lay below me on the floor of the cavern. I didn't need to look to see the violence that had occured. It was seared into my brain.

I flew to Jake's house, after I managed to convince myself that he and the tiger were separate beings, and reminded myself that he would never hurt me. Because of the others, he was the only one I really knew. He'd protected me when no one else had, defended me when no one else had. Cared about me when no one else had.

He was the first real friend I'd had in years.

And I lied to him. I told him I hadn't been able to find somewhere to demorph.

I don't know if he believed it or not. But the tears that fell from his eyes told me enough. This hurt him.

Jake, my only real friend, cried.

And I clung to the hawk's apathy for all things human, and I didn't care.